Oven-Pan

1963

Dismantling and accumulating, proliferating and separating, the sense of obliterating and the sounds from the invisible cosmos. What are all these things?--Yayoi Kusama

At age 27, Yayoi Kusama left her native Japan for New York and quickly established a reputation for herself in predominantly male avant-garde art circles. Her work contains elements of the Pop Art, Fluxus, Minimalist, and Abstract Expressionist art movements that were all going on simultaneously in New York. However, it is distinct in its obsessive, often sexually charged sensibility and in the intensively laborious and compulsive practice it demonstrates.

Oven-Pan is part of a body of works, begun in 1962, that Kusama calls "aggregation sculptures," "accumulation sculptures," or "compulsion furniture." She often starts with an object associated with women's work--in this case, a metal oven pan--and covers it with stuffed, phallic protrusions. At times, Kusama has expanded these works to room-sized installations in which the environment becomes a field of obliterating, menacing proliferations. These installations--often involving mirrors and lights that create a perceptual, performative, and kinetic experience--garnered her an association with Zero, a group of artists that included Günther Uecker and Piero Manzoni, whose works can be seen in this gallery.

"Dismantling and accumulating, proliferating and separating, the sense of obliterating and the sounds from the invisible cosmos. What are all these things?"--Yayoi Kusama

At age 27, Yayoi Kusama left her native Japan for New York and quickly established a reputation for herself in avant-garde art circles. Though her work has elements of Pop, Fluxus, Minimalism, and Surrealism, it is distinct in its obsessive, often sexually charged sensibility.

Oven-Pan is part of a continuing body of works, begun in 1962, which Kusama calls "aggregation sculptures," "accumulation sculptures," or "compulsion furniture." Often, they combine an object associated with women's work--in this case, a metal "oven pan"--with a covering of stuffed, phallic protrusions. At times, Kusama has expanded these works to room-sized installations in which the environment becomes a field of obliterating, menacing proliferations.